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Back in February, Nintendo announced that Wii and DS gamers would lose access to online play, something that spurred an outcry and, it seems, an industrious effort to avoid the change. Though today WiFi Connection goes dark, the option to play online remains.

NPD has released its report of video game sales data for June 2012, and like the months before, it isn't all that pretty. Overall sales of both hardware and software were down 30% year-over-year, dropping from $989 million in June 2011 to $699 million last month. Hardware was the biggest loser, falling a whopping 45% to just $201 million in June.

Having your console or handheld stolen is never a fun thing to deal with, but at least with Sony and Microsoft, recovering all of your downloaded apps and games once you get a new console is relatively easy. With Nintendo, data recovery is nearly impossible, as there isn't much of an account system to be found on the Wii, DS, or 3DS.

Have we finally reached the point where Nintendo has run out of colors for which to name its Pokemon RPG titles? After it chose black and white for the last installment, it seemed like that might be the case. Now it seems even more that way, as the next two entries in the franchise will be named Pokemon White 2 and Pokemon Black 2. However, the naming may not be entirely due to the fact that there are only a few colors left to choose.

Pokemon Black and White continue to sell through at impressive levels, even though the hardware they were released on has been usurped by the Nintendo 3DS and, shortly, the PlayStation Vita. Of course, though, the formidable Nintendo franchise has kept its strength because of its continuous churning out of new titles, and it appears the next game announcement may be coming soon.

In the increasingly common world of startup acquisitions, Nintendo is usually not a major player. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc are usually the ones making news for snatching up a specialized technology company to better integrate its services into future software and products. This is because Nintendo is usually not on the front lines of emerging tech, but this time it's a different story as the Mario company has just acquired a company called Mobiclip.

Nintendo has sold four million 3DS consoles in the US, the company has announced, as well as hitting new sales records on three titles, Mario and Zelda, Super Mario 3D Land, and Mario Kart 7. The milestone - which actually means the 3DS sold faster than the Wii did in its first nine months of launch, despite the glasses-free 3D handheld's pre-price-cut lull - put the 3DS in second place to the Wii in the US last year, with 4.5m of the motion-controlled consoles being sold.

Nintendo has been leading the portable gaming market for years since it launched the dual screen packing Nintendo DS. Nintendo has passed along some new numbers for the DS that come by way to stats tracking firm NPD and they show the DS is still selling very well. The Nintendo DS has now sold 50 million units since it was launched.

Nintendo has cut the price of the DS Lite console to $99.99, a $30 reduction from its previous RRP. The handheld - which has been superseded technically by the Nintendo 3DS but remains on sale as a budget, 2D-only option - is still a strong seller, with Nintendo shifting 17.52m (and almost 121m games) in 2010.

The Wii 2 may be off in 2012, but Nintendo is also talking about its current range, including sharing sales figures for the 3DS. According to the company's latest financial results [pdf link], Nintendo sold 3.61m 3DS along with 9.43m games to play on it; that pales in comparison to the DS, which Nintendo sold 17.52m of and almost 121m games.

Nonetheless, sales for hardware and software overall were down in comparison to the previous year, with net sales for the twelve month period up to 2012 being 1,014 billion yen, down 29.3-percent, and net income of 77.2 billion yen, down 66.1-percent year-on-year.